


by and by it's a waste of time

by shinealightonme



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, M/M, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-10
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2020-01-10 21:29:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18416204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightonme/pseuds/shinealightonme
Summary: "Gansey wants to set you up with someone so badly, why should we ruin that for him?"





	by and by it's a waste of time

**Author's Note:**

> Written for an anon on tumblr who requested "everyone keeps trying to set us up but we've been secretly dating for months."
> 
> I promised myself these fills would be _quick little ficlets,_ why do I lie to myself so much.

Ronan has imagined getting pulled into a closet by Adam Parrish more often then he'd like to admit, but in his fantasies Adam never looked so annoyed.

"What gives, Parrish?"

"Quiet." Adam shuts the door. It's dark in the closet, and small. Ronan doesn't want to crowd Adam, but there isn't room for more than a few inches between them. "Gansey will hear you."

"Gansey's the reason I came to this stupid party."

"Fine, go. Just don't tell him I'm in here."

Gansey is the reason that Ronan came to this party; Gansey is the reason that Ronan is in town at all, the reason that he makes the semi-weekly pilgrimage out to this snobby elitist college. He does, actually, want to spend time with Gansey.

But spending time with Gansey is a guarantee. He can see Gansey anytime he wants to. He has no guarantee that he'll ever get to see Gansey's hot, genius, overworked roommate. If he leaves now there's no telling when he'll get to talk to Adam again, let alone stand this close to him. It would be like catching a unicorn and letting it go.

So he leans against someone's scratchy wool coat and gets cozy. "You know you live with the guy, right? Do you hide in your sock drawer when he's in the dorm, is that why you're never around?"

"I don't mind Gansey when we're in our room. It's everywhere else that's a problem."

"Yeah, I'm embarrassed to be seen with him in public, too."

Adam nudges the closet door open a crack and peers out. A thin sliver of light falls across his face. Ronan can just see him grimace before he shuts the door again.

"He's not going to embarrass me," Adam says darkly. "He's going to _wingman_ for me."

The smirk slides right off of Ronan's face. At least it's dark again.

"Why'd he do that?" he asks, when he can make it sound bored instead of panicked.

"Ever since he stole my girlfriend he thinks he owes it to me to set me up with someone."

Each word of that sentence stabs Ronan like a separate knife. "I thought you and Sargent broke up before she started banging him."

"We did," Adam says, "which makes it even more patronizing that Gansey has decided he's personally responsible for my happiness. Anytime we go anywhere he swoops in with someone that I just _have_ to meet, and never mind what I actually want."

Ronan was already hesitant to ditch Adam. If leaving him alone now means that Gansey is going to set Adam up with some valedictorian or class president or Division One athlete, then as far as Ronan is concerned they live in this closet.

"You don't like anyone Gansey's thrown at you?"

Adam is peering out the door again, but he takes a break to glare at Ronan. "No."

"They all ugly or something?" This is getting dangerous; Ronan doesn't want Adam to reconsider any of Gansey's picks, but he needs to find out what if anything he _is_ looking for. Besides, talking to Adam Parrish is better than anything else a high school dropout could do at a college party, even if it turns out that Adam's type is petite and wholesome and scholastically minded.

"Or something," Adam mutters.

"You and Gansey dated the same chick, don't you have the same taste? How bad could he be screwing up?"

Adam breathes in and out, like he has to rein in his temper under control. "I'm not getting into this with you."

"You dragged me in here. You clearly need help."

"You are uniquely unqualified to help me."

"Right," Ronan snarls. "If only I went to college then I would come up with genius plans like _run away and hide._ I'm obviously not smart enough to save your pathetic love life."

"You haven't noticed I have a crush on you, so -- "

Adam's voice cuts off, like he's just realized what he's saying.

It takes Ronan a moment to realize it, too, his heartbeat picking up before his brain has processed the words. His voice comes out small and hopeful when he asks, "really?"

He can't make out Adam's expression. There's just enough light that he can see Adam nod.

"Thank fuck," Ronan blurts out, and kisses Adam. Or he tries too. He misses and ends up kissing the side of Adam's face.

Adam laughs and cups his hands around Ronan's face, holding him in place.

"Really?" Adam asks. Ronan feels the word against his skin.

"Yeah," he says, "really," and then Adam is kissing him, their mouths finding each other in the dark.

Light crashes over them. Adam's hands drop away from his face. The couple of inches that felt so small before feel enormous now, intolerable.

Ronan squints at the doorway. Some half-drunk chick is staring at them.

"Uh, can I get my jacket?"

"Oh my god." Adam flushes red, but he grabs Ronan's hand before he pushes past the interloper. He keeps holding his hand as he steps out into the party. Ronan does a quick check for Gansey but doesn't spot him. It's hard to give a shit about that when their fingers are twined together. Adam is looking at him like he doesn't know where he came from but he doesn't want him to go back.

Adam licks his lips. Ronan is so mesmerized he almost misses the question when Adam asks it, "Do you want to get out of here?"

"Oh, fuck yes," Ronan says, and Adam grins as he tugs Ronan toward the door.

-

Gansey doesn't come home for the next couple of hours, which makes sense -- they left the party early -- and is also really fucking convenient.

But he hasn't come home by the time they finally go to sleep for the night, and he still isn't there when Ronan wakes up in the morning, Adam warm and sleepy in his arms, and that's kind of weird.

Well, it's still fucking convenient, but it's also weird.

"Maybe he came in late and woke up early?" Adam suggests.

"If he was here at any point in the night we would have heard the tears of joy," Ronan says.

"Oh, god." Adam covers his face in one hand. "Gansey's going to be insufferably happy for us, isn't he?"

Ronan thinks about it and grimaces. It's a lot to face on an empty stomach.

"Let's get food," except when they get to the dining hall, they find an exhausted Gansey brooding over a bowl of cantaloupe.

"Oh! There you are," Gansey says. "You guys disappeared last night."

"Yeah, sorry about that," Adam says, not sorry in the least. Every trace of last night's irritation with Gansey is gone. He sounds so happy that it sends a jolt of pure joy through Ronan: _I made him happy. I did this good thing._ "We didn't hear you come back to the room last night, did you crash at Blue's?"

"If only," Gansey sighs. "Things got rather out of hand at the party last night. I ended up driving a load of freshmen to the emergency room."

"Sounds like our night was a lot better than yours," Ronan says.

"That's an understatement," and Gansey launches into an exhaustive recounting of the drama that they had missed at the party. He leaves Ronan no opening to say _by the way we hooked up last night and as far as I'm concerned we're going to keep hooking up, forever and ever, amen_. Ronan settles for bumping his shoulder against Adam's shoulder and eating off Adam's plate and dodging Adam's halfhearted attempts to defend his food with a butter knife.

"You could _get your own_ ," Adam tells him.

"It tastes better when it's stolen."

Adam tries to object to that, but a huge goofy grin breaks out across his face instead, and he looks down at his plate.

Ronan looks down, too, and then over to Gansey, who is -- _watching_ them, with an odd sort of intensity. Ronan figures that he and Adam are being pretty obvious, but so what? Anyone who lands Adam Parrish deserves to brag about it.

"Well, so, yeah, that's about everything you missed," Gansey says, even though Ronan is pretty sure that the story he was mostly ignoring didn't, in fact, have an ending. "You know, I just remembered that I promised I would help my friend study for his Latin quiz, I should go."

Ronan blinks. "Wait, what?"

Gansey's already picking up his tray of barely touched food. "We'll hang out later, okay?" and then he's up and speed walking across the dining hall, while Ronan's still off-balance. He expected Gansey to be weirdly over-invested in them. He hadn't expected Gansey to do anything as tactful as giving them space.

But, whatever, Ronan thinks on his feet. He's about to suggest that they ditch breakfast and take advantage of the dorm room being empty, when he notices that Adam has frozen with a scone halfway to his mouth.

Ronan steals the scone.

"Gansey is trying to set us up," Adam says.

"You think?"

"I _know_ ," Adam says, "I have _extensive experience_ with Gansey's feeble attempts at matchmaking. This is a set up."

"So he's not completely wrong about what you want in a relationship." Ronan curses at himself for being an idiot as soon as the words are out of his mouth. Sure, his daydreams turned overnight from _get jumped by Adam Parrish_ to _pick out wedding invitations with Adam Parrish,_ but they hadn't actually talked about any of this shit. Calling it a _relationship_ after one night was probably needy.

But Adam just rolls his eyes. "I can't believe my boyfriend is fishing for validation. I thought I would be the insecure one -- "

Ronan kisses him, fast, before he loses the chance.

"Gansey's going to be insufferable when we tell him that his stupid matchmaking worked."

"It didn't," Ronan points out. "We were together before he did anything. If he's going to get credit he has to work for it."

Adam blinks, and then his grin grows even wider. "You don't mean -- "

"Gansey wants to set you up with someone so badly, why should we ruin that for him?"

-

Ronan visits again on a weeknight. Adam's working, so it's just him and Gansey hanging around the dorm room for a few hours. It's nice. It feels like old times.

It doesn't feel like old times when Adam gets back to the room and Gansey "suddenly" comes down with a headache.

"If we could just turn off some lights, that would help."

"I have a paper to write tonight," Adam argues.

"We can light candles."

"We can get written up by the RA."

"Nonsense," Gansey says, with the confidence of a man who is genetically immune to authority figures.

"Yeah, Parrish." Ronan pulls a lighter out of his pocket and flicks it on. "It's just a little fire, what's the worst that could happen?"

"A _big_ fire," Adam says, and Ronan has the sudden dumb impulse to butt his head against Adam's chest, to bury his face in Adam's shirt and not budge for the rest of the night.

Adam's face goes a little pink, like he knows what Ronan is thinking.

"Fine," he says, dropping his backpack by his desk and falling into his chair, "as long as I can still read."

Gansey pulls out about two dozen candles ("Why do you have a fuckton of candles if they aren't allowed?" "For emergencies! What would you do if the power went out?" "Sleep," Adam says, like having a natural disaster drop on his head sounds pretty appealing. "If these are for emergencies why do they smell like strawberries?") and sets them around the room.

Ronan and Gansey play cards for a while, a game called Poker Punch that they made up when they were fourteen and even dumber than they are now. Adam works on his laptop and occasionally criticizes whoever is currently losing, whether that's his roommate or his secret boyfriend. It's sort of disappointing that Adam's loyalty can't be bought with sex.

After a few hands Gansey claims he's tired and goes to bed.

Ronan waits until he's settled in, lying on his side facing the wall, before before he raises his eyebrows at Adam: _get a load of this fucking guy._

Adam looks pointedly at his phone.

Ronan picks it up; there's a message from Adam, ten seconds old: _So he WANTS us to have sex while he's in the next bed?_

Ronan pecks out a response. _cool i alwaysthought gansey was a freak_

 _I take it back, I didn't need that mental image_  
_Seriously how does he think this is going to play out_  
_You're going to be swept away by the sight of my cheekbones in the candlelight and seduce me?_

Adam looks amazing by candlelight, which means jack shit; Adam looks amazing anywhere.

 _you're supposed to seduce me_  
_duh_  
_i'm shy country boy_

Adam snorts.

 _Uh-huh, sure_  
_You don't just put out after someone drags you into a closet_

Ronan puts his phone down to flip Adam off.

Adam smirks at him and turns pointedly back to his books.

Ronan busies himself with defacing Gansey's playing cards. He leaves the face cards for last; it's easy to make people look inappropriate. It takes real artistry to make the five of diamonds into something obscene.

When he looks over at his phone later, there's a message waiting for him.

_I wish I could kiss you right now_

Adam sent it twenty minutes ago, and then went right back to typing. He's leaning in a little too close to his computer screen, a small frown on his face.

Ronan shifts close enough to him to rest a hand on his wrist.

Adam stops typing.

Ronan lifts his hand up to his face. He kisses each finger softly, and then drops a kiss in the center of his palm.

Adam doesn't move. Ronan's not even sure he's breathing. When he looks up, Adam is watching him with a stunned, vulnerable expression on his face. It makes Ronan want to smile. It makes him feel like crying.

And then Gansey snorts in his sleep, and Adam is smiling a very different kind of smile, and Ronan presses his mouth against Adam's hand so that he won't laugh loud enough to wake Gansey up.

-

Gansey spends two days' worth of texts -- five texts total -- convincing Ronan to see some shitty movie with him. He insists that they 'have' to see it together, refuses to watch it on his own and leave their finite time together for things that Ronan actually wants to do. Ronan gives in because otherwise by the time he does see Gansey he'll still be pissed.

It all makes sense when he gets to the theater and sees Adam waiting out front.

"Gansey didn't come with you?" Adam asks.

"We're meeting here."

"How long do you think before -- " Adam's phone lights up even as he pulls it out of his pocket. He flips it around so Ronan can read the screen: _I hate to do this at the last minute but I can't make the movie --_

"For fuck's sake," Ronan says. It comes out sort of fond. Gansey is dumb and infuriating, but when he comes up with a dumb infuriating idea, he follows through, goddammit.

"Is the idea that if he leaves us alone for two hours we'll spontaneously start making out?"

They consider this for a moment.

"Hey," Ronan says, "want to ditch the movie and go make out?"

"Obviously."

-

Sometimes Ronan doesn't tell Gansey that he's going to visit, because he doesn't know he's going visit; he just needs to drive, and drive, and drive, and then he realizes he's a hundred miles from home so he might as well drop in and say hello.

Which means Gansey didn't have time to plan any matchmaking antics. And given the level he's operating at when he _does_ have time to plan, any amount of self-awareness should keep him from improvising.

Gansey has zero self-awareness about this, because when he sees Ronan standing in the door to his dorm he whirls around and throws his coffee all over Adam.

Adam yelps and throws his hands out to protect his laptop from rogue liquids. "Jesus, be a little more careful!"

"Oh, I'm sorry, that didn't burn, did it..."

"No, it's cold. It's also gonna stain." Adam pulls his shirt off over his head.

"I'll throw it in with my laundry, I was just about to do a load -- Ronan, can you help Adam clean up in here?"

Adam's head whips up and his jaw drops open. It's the closest Ronan has ever seen him to looking dumb. It's bizarrely endearing to think that _he_ did that to Adam. That he's the one Adam can't look away from, even when Gansey snatches the shirt out of his hand and hurries out of the room with a basket of laundry that is, at most, a quarter full.

"This is _Harvard_ ," Adam blurts out.

"Fuck, is it? I just went out for a six-pack."

"Gansey goes to Harvard," Adam says. "He's a peer mentor. He's penpals with a professor at Oxford, and the _best_ idea he can come up with is to make me take my shirt off? I'm disappointed."

Ronan smirks and reaches out for his bare chest. " _I'm_ not."

-

Ronan starts to wonder after a while if Gansey is _ever_ going to figure it out.

Sneaking around isn't so bad at first. He likes having some time to work through the awkwardness of long distance and phone calls and texting and all their combined fuckton of baggage without having an audience. And he likes it when he looks at Adam sometimes and it strikes him like a punch to the heart, that there's this thing in between them that no one else can touch. He _definitely_ likes the time Gansey comes back to the room unexpectedly and Adam panics and shoves Ronan's head under the covers, and then has to try to hold a normal conversation with Gansey while Ronan tries to distract him.

But the sex would be hot anyway, and if Gansey knew, he wouldn't pull shit like this:

"Open the door, Gansey," Adam says.

"It's stuck!"

"If this is a prank -- "

"It's _not_ ," and Ronan believes him: whatever he did to get them stuck in here, it's not anything he can undo. "Henry went to get the landlord, it won't be long."

Adam inhales but doesn't say anything. He backs away from the door and thumps against the wall of the closet in Gansey's friend's apartment.

Ronan leans against the wall next to him. "At least this is bigger than the last closet."

"Ronan -- " Adam's voice is wrecked. "I can't do this right now."

"What's wrong?"

"We're locked in a closet."

Ronan fails to see where that would have this much of an effect on Adam, who has been known to hide in closets of his own free will. "Are you claustrophobic?"

"I'm not scared, I'm _angry_." Of course; in Adam Parrish's world, fear is bad, but rage is worse. "I had five minutes of free time for my whole day and now they're gone. Every moment I'm stuck in here is -- " He fists his hands in his hair and breathes in, fast and shallow.

"Do you want me to kick down the door?"

It's not a very good laugh, but Adam does laugh.

"What's so funny?" Ronan asks, exaggerated annoyance. "I could do it."

"Don't break anything for me. I'd only feel worse."

"Okay." Ronan doesn't think Adam will allow a touch, but God, he sounds like he needs it. Ronan shifts closer, testing the waters, and when Adam doesn't react he snakes a hand around him, between his back and the wall.

Adam holds himself upright for one more tightly wound second, and then he relaxes into Ronan's body.

"You aren't working today, are you?" Ronan asks. Gansey is good about remembering things like that; he wouldn't fuck with Adam's livelihood.

"No, that's why I blocked out today to study for physics. I have a test on Friday."

"We can study in here," Ronan says.

Adam sounds confused when he asks, "we can?" which is a step up from _fucking miserable_.

"Yeah. I bet you already know everything need to to know, just talk me through it."

"Come on, Ronan, you don't want to hear me rant about photons."

"I've got hidden depths, you don't know what I'm into."

"I have a pretty good idea what you're into by now," Adam mutters. It has to be a good sign that Adam is joking about sex. If Adam were any less stressed about schoolwork, Ronan would say _hey, let's make out_ and not give a shit about Gansey and his stupid friend and his stupid friend's stupid landlord catching them.

But Adam is stressed, and the only thing Ronan really wants to do is keep that defeated note out of Adam's voice.

"I was promised a rant about photons," he says. "I want to know what those fuckers are up to."

Adam breathes in shakily. "Okay, so, elementary particles."

Ten minutes later when a grumpy landlord pulls the door out of its frame, Ronan is sitting in the middle of Gansey's friend's extensive shoe collection while Adam explains how particles are also waves. Adam is up like a shot, grabbing his stuff and dashing out the door with barely a goodbye. Gansey looks disappointed. He isn't the only one.

Adam still hasn't come back from the library by the time Ronan leaves. It's only when he's back home that he sees the text.

 _Thanks for talking me down_  
_I'd be trapped in a closet with you any day_

-

Ronan likes Blue Sargent a lot better as Gansey's girlfriend then as Adam's girlfriend, but it's a passive sort of thing. He only ever sees her when Gansey's around, if then; they aren't _buddies_ , they don't gossip about boys or share their deepest darkest secrets.

So he's not prepared for her to ask "how long have you two been dating, anyway?"

Ronan looks wildly around the dining hall. Gansey is still safely out of earshot, getting his third cup of coffee of the morning. He shoves a spoonful of cereal into his mouth to cover up his surprise. "Six weeks?" he says with his mouth obnoxiously full.

"Two months," Adam corrects him.

"Damn. We should have done something for our anniversary."

"We did," Adam says dryly, "that was the night Gansey accidentally took us to that cooking class that he 'didn't know was for couples, honestly!'"

"And you can't just _tell_ him you're dating, because...?" Blue asks.

"Because he dragged us to a couple's cooking class and pretended it was an accident."

She considers this. "Fair."

-

Gansey talks them into attending another stupid apartment party. Ronan doesn't think it's a trick so much as end-of-the-year excitement. Adam, God bless him, doesn't even notice he has a vacation coming up; he switched seamlessly from stressing about finals to stressing about grades.

Ronan is excited enough for both of them. Tonight he's going to ask Adam to stay with him over the summer. He's just waiting for the right moment, standing close to Adam and leaning in to talk into his ear over the music and brushing up against him in a way that could look casual but isn't.

"I'm getting another drink," Ronan says. One more ounce of liquid courage and he'll be ready. "You want anything?"

Adam looks at him for a long second before shaking his head.

"What? I'll get it, just tell me."

"No, just -- " Adam shakes his head again. "Come back soon, okay?" He asks it like he's not sure Ronan wants to, like it's an _imposition_ instead of exactly what any person with two brain cells would do. If Gansey weren't prowling around the party somewhere Ronan would give up on finding a drink and just kiss Adam senseless.

But he is, and so he doesn't, just bumps Adam with his hip before he walks away.

He grabs a drink and starts back across the room. Gansey has just appeared next to Adam, crawled up out of whatever nerdy corner of the party he was hiding in. He brought some guy with him, and there's a moment where Gansey is gesturing between him and Adam, like --

\-- like he's introducing them.

Ronan drops his beer.

There's no way that Adam could have heard that over the noise of the party, but his eyes flick across the room and find Ronan.

Ronan whirls around shoves through drunken undergrads to get to the door.

Gansey has moved on. Why not? He wanted to find someone for Adam, and Ronan obviously wasn't working out. Of course he'd find someone who was a better match. The only surprise was that he'd wasted three whole months on someone who was such an obvious mistake.

"Ronan!"

He doesn't stop when he hears Adam, doesn't stop until Adam catches up to him in the hallway outside the apartment.

Adam stands in his way. Ronan can't bring himself to push past him. He settles for spite. "You're keeping Gansey and your new boyfriend waiting."

"I didn't ask Gansey to set me up with anyone."

"You didn't fucking need to, did you? Because as far as he knows you're single."

"He does," Adam says, his temper starting to flare up, "which was _your idea,_ Lynch."

"Right, that's how we know it's stupid, because it was my idea."

"I never thought any of this was stupid until right now."

Ronan winces. It doesn't help that Adam looks horrified a second later, when he realizes that _any of this_ could include _our relationship._ "I didn't mean -- "

"I heard what you said."

"Ronan. Please. Help me," and damn it to hell but Ronan is powerless against those words coming from Adam. He didn't know that before now. He's never heard them before now. "I'm still trying to figure out how we went from fine to fighting over something stupid that wasn't even my fault."

Ronan can't refuse him. He can't even be mad about it anymore. He just feels empty and useless.

"Why is it so unthinkable that you would date me?"

Adam lifts his hands up, a helpless, bewildered gesture, like he's trying to catch something when he doesn't know where it's going to fall. "I _am_ dating you."

"Are you? Really? How serious can it be if my best friend can't even tell?"

Adam isn't satisfied with that, but Ronan doesn't have anything else for him. Adam drops his hands to his sides and he walks back into the party without another word.

Ronan slumps against the wall. Everything had felt so great, even with the distance and the sneaking around and constant reminders that he wasn't Harvard material. He hadn't noticed that they had no foundation, that they were floating in midair. Of course they were going to fall.

But before Ronan can pull himself together enough to get the hell out of this depressing hallway, Adam returns, pulling Gansey along behind him.

"Gansey," Adam says, completely pissed off, "meet my boyfriend. His name is Ronan. We're _very happy together._ "

Gansey darts his eyes between them, confused by Adam's words or his tone or the abrupt end of this game he just found out he was playing. "Con...gratulations?"

"Thanks," Ronan says, "now get lost."

Gansey takes a step down the hallway before he protests, "you know, I was quite literally dragged into this -- "

Ronan pushes him back into the apartment and shuts the door in his face.

With Gansey gone, it's just them. Ronan should turn back around and talk to Adam. He doesn't.

"That." Adam says. Ronan stares at the door like it's _fascinating_ instead of the ugliest piece of wood he's ever seen. "That was okay, right?"

"I didn't think it could be that easy," Ronan says. "I guess I am stupid."

"You're not." Adam rests his forehead against Ronan's back and places his hands on Ronan's sides. "I was stupid. I should have seen how much this was bothering you."

"I want to show you off," Ronan admits. The door doesn't give a shit, which makes it a lot easier to focus on than Adam, whose fingers just dug into his sides. "And I don't get to."

"You do, okay? From now on you get to do whatever you want."

"No, I don't. Because then everyone would realize -- that doesn't make sense. That asshole doesn't get to have Adam Parrish."

Adam's arms slide around his waist, holding him in place. "You _do_ ," he says fiercely. "It doesn't matter if some hypothetical moron thinks that doesn't make sense. It doesn't matter if Gansey thinks it _does_ make sense, it's not up to any of them." Ronan feels Adam's chest move in and out, short ragged breathing. His voice goes hoarse when he says, "it doesn't matter if someone thinks I'm too poor and broken and boring for you -- "

Ronan whirls around as fast as he can with Adam clinging to him. Adam's face is downcast. Ronan cups the side of his face and lifts it up.

Adam gives him the smallest smile Ronan has ever seen. "I tried to warn you I'd be the insecure one."

"Adam." Ronan touches their foreheads together. "You're not too poor or too boring or too _anything_ except too good for me."

"Don't," Adam says, "I don't want this thing where one of us always feels unworthy. It's not better if it's you instead of me. We picked each other and that means we deserve each other, okay?"

"Yeah," Ronan says. "Yeah, okay. We get to have each other."

"Good. I'm glad we settled that."

Ronan snorts, involuntary and kind of gross with how close their faces are. Adam treating their mutual shitty self-esteem like some kind of group project to be delegated and wrapped up before the deadline is the funniest fucking thing in the entire world. That or he's high off of relief.

"I want you to live with me during the break," Ronan admits.

"You -- " Adam says, and "yes," and "wait, how," and "won't your family mind?"

"They won't." Ronan remembers Declan exists. "Or they can fucking deal."

"Okay," Adam laughs. "Yes, oh, wait, no, Gansey already moved half my stuff to his parents' place."

"So we'll go get it." Ronan nuzzles Adam's cheek. "Unless you'd rather stay there."

"No. I want this."

Ronan kisses him once, softly, and pulls away to look at him. Adam looks incredible when he's just been kissed.

"God, I'm glad Gansey knows," Adam says. "Imagine trying to come up with an excuse for me to stay at your place."

"You're sick of pretentious losers and you want to drop out and become a farmer."

"Projecting much, Lynch? Maybe I'm going to take a psychology class and I want to use you as a test subject."

Ronan bites his ear for that. "Maybe you _should_ stay at his place so he doesn't get lonely. You can drive over to my place after he falls asleep -- "

" -- and drive back before he wakes up, sure. He only has insomnia, that plan is totally feasible."

Every shitty thing they don't have to do to keep their secret just makes Ronan happier. He wants to share that feeling. He kisses Adam, tries to tell him _I am choosing this happiness that you've given me_.

Adam leans into it, opening his mouth against Ronan's, like he's saying _me too._

"Do you _mind_?"

Ronan turns and discovers that he and Adam have been interrupted by the same half-drunk girl who caught them making out in the closet.

"We're having a moment," he tells her.

"Can you have it somewhere else? You're blocking the exit."

Ronan doesn't see how that's his problem, and he's about to tell her so when Adam tugs him away.

"If Gansey's still at the party we have the room to ourselves."

Ronan can't pretend he's not interested in that, but he tries anyway. "I thought I was supposed to show you off now?"

"You can do that on the way." Adam sticks his hand in Ronan's back pocket.

Ronan beams at him. "Oh, this is so fucking stupid."

"If you don't _want_ to be grossly affectionate in public -- " Adam starts.

Ronan slides his hand into Adam's back pocket. "Come on, let's go be stupid together."

-

"I _knew_ you two would make a great couple."

"You don't get to call yourself a marksman when you're firing buckshot," Adam says.

"Translation for those of us that weren't raised to exhaustively perform masculinity?" Blue asks.

"A thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters will eventually find Parrish a boyfriend," Ronan says. Adam grins at him blindingly from his desk, where he has half of his books already boxed up with obsessive care. Ronan wasn't allowed to help pack anything that could break, bend, or fold. He's currently seeing how much of Adam's clothing he can stuff into paper bags.

"I feel like my powers of discernment are being maligned," Gansey protests.

"You thought I would make a great couple with _Tad Carruthers_ , you have no powers of discernment."

"To be fair," Blue starts ("thank you," Gansey interjects, to zero acknowledgement), "if I were trying to set you up I wouldn't know where to start, either."

"But you wouldn't try to set me up."

"Of course not, that was a terrible idea, I know better than Gansey."

"I rescind my gratitude," Gansey says.

"But if I had to find someone for you, I wouldn't know where to start," Blue continues. "You dated me and now you're dating Ronan, it's not like you have a type."

Adam sets down the box he was building, only half-made. "You're joking, right?" No one is joking, though Ronan is pretty fucking amused about _everything_ today. "You don't see any common elements there?"

Ronan looks down at Blue. Blue looks up at Ronan.

"Nope."

"Not a one."

Adam mutters something about _denial_ and goes back to his packing.

Gansey says, " _I_ take your meaning, Parrish," like the total suck-up he is.

"You just want me to retract my statement about your powers of discernment."

"No, I really do agree with you! Why must you assume I have an ulterior motive?" 

"Why?" Adam asks, stern faced. "I don't know, maybe because -- the last three months have been -- _nonstop ulterior motive_ ," and then he's laughing too hard to keep talking, and then Gansey is laughing, too. They try to fistbump and miss. It's a pathetic mess, and Ronan is a little afraid that if he watches any longer he'll turn into a pathetic mess, too.

He grabs a sharpie off a box near Blue, to keep his hands busy.

"You know," she tells him, "I think we're the only intelligent human beings in this whole building."

Ronan thinks about all the countless Harvard undergrads who are also packing up their dorms right now, and how much their lives must suck. All that fucking school and they don't even get to take Adam home with them for the summer.

"Fuck yeah, we are," he says, and writes _BUTTZ_ on the bag full of Adam's boxers.

**Author's Note:**

> Gansey is a complex wonderful character who deserves nuanced sympathetic treatment and I love him but also sometimes I need a buffoon and he gives good buffoon. Sorry, Dick.
> 
> If you like this fic, you can [reblog it on tumblr.](http://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/184086040600/congrats-on-your-trc-fic-anniversary-everyone)


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